


supplicator

by hellbeast



Series: broken string [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Barely Canon Compliant, Gen, Lore - Freeform, Trickster Gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 02:44:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1209778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellbeast/pseuds/hellbeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam thinks that they might be trying to level with one another, after everything they’ve put each other through, but they’re speaking two dialects of the same buried language and they miss each other’s points.</p>
            </blockquote>





	supplicator

“So,” Gabriel’s tinny recorded voice says, and to Sam it sounds like defiance, like resignation, like supplication and all he can think is _The Messenger, The Mediator, The Supplicator_ , “This is me, standing up.”

The video, the porno – and way to be classy there, Gabe – keeps playing, until Dean’s eyebrows jump and he shuts the laptop.

They’re alive and they’ve got a plan, but Gabriel has probably just been killed standing up to a brother he loved, and all Sam can think is, _how many more people are we going to ask to die for us?_

* * *

(The answer, Sam realizes, as he watches the sky disappear the further he falls directly into Hell, has always been ‘one too many’)

* * *

Lucifer grasps at Sam’s face and tells him he’s sorry, in harsh whispers with stuttering syllables; Lucifer rakes his fingers deep into the pools of Sam’s soul and twists, spitting accusations and radiating hurt; Lucifer sits next to Sam and they watch Michael throw himself at the edges of the cage, shrieking in harsh defiance; Lucifer argues with Michael, his words thick and guttural and full of power, and the two angels grapple at each other; Lucifer comforts Michael with the surety that only a younger sibling can pull off, whispering promises of a returning Father; Lucifer wraps himself around Sam and hides him from Hell and Michael and themselves; Lucifer wraps himself around Sam and begins to choke and smother.

That is the Cage. That is Hell.

* * *

One day, Sam gets out.

* * *

Lucifer and Michael are a twined tsunami of grace, rattling the edges of space and reality as they strike at each other petulantly. Adam is gone – Sam likes to think that Michael released his soul from the confines of his broken body not too long before the Cage locked itself around them. Sam is pretending that Adam made it through Hell, into the Gardens of Heaven. If anyone will look after him, Joshua will.

Sam doesn’t have that option, that choice. Sam is going to lay in the bed he made, stuck in Hell with Lucifer and Michael. There’s no rack, just two angels who switch between hating him and admiring him and wanting to hurt everything around them. Sometimes Lucifer breaks Sam, just to spite Michael. Sometimes Michael pieces Sam back together, just to irritate Lucifer. Sam is stuck in the middle of Michael’s unstoppable force and Lucifer’s immoveable presence. Sam is the point where they meet, the clash of impossibilities that starts to wreck reality.

Sam isn’t going anywhere. He can’t.

And then one day, he slips through the cage.

He’s not sure how. One moment he’s cowering, hoping that Lucifer and Michael will keep their battle relatively self-contained. The next, he’s watching the cool tones of Lucifer blend and mash into the fierce, bright colours of Michael before separating. The cage groans as it stretches to contain them, and from the outside, Sam can see the shockwaves of grace when the archangels collide. He can see the breaks in time and space, rippling and tearing. Outside the cage, leading into Hell proper, it’s barren. Dark and smelling of blood and terror and the sharp metallic weight of guilt and shame, but it’s empty. Flat and unpopulated.

Except – 

Except, there’s a coyote watching him. A coyote, in the depths of Hell.

“As dreams go,” Sam says aloud, and the coyote’s ears swivel towards him, “This is pretty tame. Weird, but tame.”

The coyote slinks forward, ear perked in curiosity. It sniffs at him demurely, and then swishes its tail at him as it turn to move away, uninterested. Sam watches it, the swagger in its stride and the way the arid winds of Hell muss its fur. In a land full of broken beautiful things, this coyote is _whole_ and resplendent.

“Well, Winchester,” the coyote turns to look back to him, with a voice that is both earth-deep and air-smooth, when he doesn’t make to follow, “You want out of this Pit or not?”

Sam has imagined leaving Hell in a number of ways. This was never one of them.

He takes one last look back at the ever-feuding brothers, and the sight of Lucifer – cold and burning (and sometimes the soothing chill needed to cool the heat and anger rooted deep in Sam’s very _bones_ ) – moves something heavy and strange in his chest. Sam wonders what Lucifer will be when he awakens from this dream; kindness in cruelty or sadism wrapped in empathy?

Sam follows the coyote.

* * *

Sam wakes up.

That’s not surprising – differentiating conscious horrors from subconscious terrors gets easier after time. He remembers, Michael and Lucifer almost as one, and suddenly seeing the cage from the outside. A coyote, who led him across the vast plains of Hell until they reached a gateway forged on the aged bones of a fallen angel who became an archdemon.

After that, he remembers the faint echo of Lucifer in his chest, in his head, calling for him, lost and confused and angry and vengeful.

Sam wakes up, but where there should be screams and cries and the eternal reach of the Cage, there is only a huge, deep swath of darkness, barely allowing its brighter parts to shine through.

Light, Sam realizes.

There is no light in Hell.

Sam blinks, and takes in the night sky.

* * *

He is in a field, or on some plain, and there is nothing around him for acres and acres. There, what must be miles away, a copse of trees leads off into what he assumes to be a forest.

He’s out of Hell.

The night sky becomes clearer the longer he stares at it, stars effulgent and pulsing. The moon is a shy quarter, peering timidly from the cover of thick, rolling clouds.

 _This isn’t real_ , Sam tells himself, digging his fingernails deep into the flesh of his palms, _this **can’t** be real._

A breeze rolls across the plain, stirring the grass around him.

 _One way or another, I have to get up_ , Sam thinks, digging his nails deeper, _one way or another, I’ll find out if this is real, or if it’s Lucifer. Or if it’s **Michael**._

Sam lies there, in the grass, for a long, long while.

* * *

(Michael, Sam has found, is cruel in such a way that he doesn’t realize it.

Where Lucifer is calculating and can pull you apart piece by piece, Michael is the one who would break you and only afterwards realize that you weren’t as strong as he wanted you to be.

But they’d both been learning from each other, and Sam frankly isn’t sure which could hurt him more, which _wants_ to hurt him more.)

* * *

It’s hours, maybe days, maybe weeks or months later that he finally moves.

The sun is warm on his back and his face, and the forest doesn’t look so far in the light of day.

If everything does turn out to be a falsity, Sam’s not going to waste this illusion by sitting frightfully in one place. And if it turns out to be true – if Sam is out of the cage--

Maybe he’ll find some flowers.

* * *

Sam has been walking for a while. He’d finally hit the edge of the forest with the sun still mostly overheard. It’s harder to navigate than he’d thought, the trees pressed close like lovers, branches overlapping and interlocking. The roots nearly trip him with every step, but his fingers always find smooth bark when he reaches desperately for balance.

It’s a good forest, Sam decides. A kind forest, if a little playful.

“I’m glad you think so,” someone says. Sam looks around; upon the hill before him, where the trees begin to space out, there’s a deer with huge golden antlers regarding him with amusement.

“Um,” Sam manages. His voice is rough and dry; the deer dips its head. Sam nods back dumbly.

“There’s a river over this hill. The water is clean, and the berries that grow on the shore are safe.”

“Thank you,” Sam rasps, dipping his head back. It seems only right, to be polite to the talking animals, “I, uh- I think I’m looking for a coyote?”

The deer snorts and tosses its head, stomping a back hoof, “You _think_? You best **know** for certain, boy, before you go seeking out that fool of a skinwalker.”

“Oh,” Sam says, surprised at the deer’s sudden agitation, “I- thanks, again. For, you know.”

He gestures absently and beats a hasty retreat, ignoring the heavy gaze of the beast as he makes his way over the hill.

The river is at least 30 feet wide, and the water is the clear blue he’s only ever seen on vacation brochures. Thick berries hang plump and succulent from the dark bushes along the bank.

Sam drinks like a man dehydrated, and thinks that he just be that. He can’t remember the last time he thought about meager things like _thirst_ or _hunger_. The berries are good, some tart and juicy, others so sweet that it makes his toes curl in pure hedonistic pleasure. He tears strips from his sleeves and ties them around handfuls of berries. He uses the lining of his jacket, thick smooth leaves and slit from the river bed to fashion a skin that he fills with water.

Twigs and leaves break behind him, and he whirls around, cursing his lack of a weapon.

It’s only the deer, though. The talking one.

“If you’re really looking for him, don’t bother,” the deer says after a moment. This close, Sam can see that tiny ornaments and beads hang from its antlers, the bright purple of its irises, “He’ll come and find you.”

“Thank you,” Sam repeats meekly, for lack of anything else to say, “Really, thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” The deer huffs, exasperated and something a little like fond, “I doubt you realize what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

* * *

Sam is awake, but he knows this is a dream. Or well, he’s pretty sure he knows it’s a dream.

But then again, Sam’s not sure he knows much of anything, anymore.

There’s a fire, glowing brightly and cheerily before him. He is sitting on a log. Behind him he can hear the bushes shifting in the light breezes and the burble of the river.

The coyote – the one that led him out of the Cage, and out of Hell – is across the fire. Lucifer is next to him.

Lucifer is as Sam remembers him the most, in Nick’s body. The open sores are gone and replaced with days’ worth of stubble. He’s wearing flannel, and Sam thinks absurdly that he probably has that same shirt tucked away in a duffel somewhere.

Had.

He probably _had_.

The coyote looks different, maybe. Dirtier or cleaner, Sam can’t say, but he knows that there just seems to be _more_ to the creature than there was before. More substance, perhaps. He can see the lean muscles move beneath fur, the expansion of lungs, the heavy breath from a maw of fangs. Dream or not, the coyote is something real, something tangible in the ways that Sam doesn’t think he’s ever been.

“Brother,” Lucifer breathes, breaking the silence. He sounds disbelieving. The Coyote laughs, and it sounds more like birds taking flight and the earth screaming and the sky breaking. Sam flinches, and wants to cover his ears. He doesn’t though – if he can withstand Michael and Lucifer in the Cage, screaming and arguing and the sonic booms of their collisions, he can handle the way that the laugh of a coyote seems to break life itself.

“Figures,” The Coyote says, shaking its head, even as its fur splits into a line of pink flesh and starts to slowly peel away from its skull, “Though I’m a lot less of your brother than you think.”

This is a pretty fucking bizarre dream, Sam decides. The skull and clavicle falls away into dust and human looking hands pull themselves from within the layers of peeling fur and muscle. As though the body of the coyote is legions deep, an archangel crawls out, pulling themselves up by bloodied fur with equally bloody hands.

“Gabriel... Brother,” Lucifer says, only now with an air of confusion. Sam can understand the sentiment.

Because what pulls itself out of the coyote looks nothing like the Gabriel that Sam knows. Gabriel's vessel is a short white guy with slicked back hair, honey gold eyes and a perpetual smirk. What comes out of the coyote is tall like a Sequoia and dark-skinned like volcanic earth and feels _old_ , like the preserved ruins of a long-lost civilization. But somehow, Sam still knows it's the same archangel. Even though this Gabriel has no hair and looks smooth like a Ken doll; no nipples, no finger nails, no eyelashes. Like something great and terrible and unspeakable that learned to be human from a distance. 

“I thought you were dead,” Sam says slowly, nowhere close to understanding, “I thought you stood up.”

“I am dead. I did stand up,” Gabriel replies, only that can’t be quite true, if he’s not lying, “I got struck down.”

Next to Sam, Lucifer winces.

“I don’t…?”

The angel sighs – is he still an angel, considering that he was just a coyote? This is confusing, Sam thinks.

“I was Gabriel. I’ll always be Gabriel, first and foremost, but… you don’t just _pretend_ to be a god, kid. For every inch of me that was Gabriel, I was also Anansi and Coyote and Loki and Set. I’m just as much them as I was an archangel.”

The fire crackles loudly as the last pieces of coyote fall from the pelt around Gabriel and into the flames. Beside Sam, Lucifer is hunched and Sam can feel the anger in his guilt and hurt ( _I know the Devil’s tells_ , Sam finds himself thinking, wildly, _I’d **kick his ass** at poker_ ). Gabriel watches both of them, his eyes brighter and more a predatory gold than the warm ocher that Sam remembers.

“Set was a dick,” Sam finds himself blurting out into the somber silence. Gabriel just laughs, though. Lucifer’s shoulders lose their tension, and Sam knows he’s more amused than wary now.

“Yeah,” Gabriel – _the_ trickster, all gods of mischief – agrees, lips quivering up as he fights off a smile, “I kinda was.”

* * *

Gabriel doesn’t stay Gabriel very often; he slides into his coyote pelt with ease and trots alongside Sam, he crafts illusions with the magic of jötunn, glides on the wings of kestrels and hawks and lopes on the legs of lions and polar bears (and the death beats of vulture wings, until Sam tells him he’s not as funny as he thinks he is).

The terrain changes, slowly, from low plains to hills to thick vegetation and cloying heat. And still, Sam walks, with Gabriel sometimes to his left and Lucifer sometimes to his right. Every now and again, the brothers even talk to each other, though it never seems to Sam that they talk about the same things.

(Gabriel talks about the time he spent on earth, moving from pantheon to pantheon and how he came to love the freedom of being who he chose, exacting a god’s wrath and kindness without being forced to think of home. He speaks of making family where family can be found, and love and hate and wanting to be close to others. Lucifer talks of Heaven, before, when everything was simple and new and then he speaks of Hell, and the darkness and being separated from his brothers, his Father. He speaks of family and blood and grace and Creators, of forgiveness and punishment and never being warm again.

Sam thinks that they might be trying to level with one another, after everything they’ve put each other through, but they’re speaking two dialects of the same buried language and they miss each other’s points.)

Gabriel and Lucifer agree, though, that they’re in Limbo, somewhere between Hell and Purgatory and Life. The very edges of the earth, where no creature lives, but life still creeps.

(It explains the stars and the forests, Sam realizes, but then, what about the deer with the golden antlers? He means to ask Gabriel – Coyote, Set, Loki, Anansi – but the thoughts swirl away from him every time he opens his mouth).

“I know the way out,” Gabriel assures him, “But you’re mostly human, so it’s gonna be a minute before we can bust this popsicle stand.”

“Mostly?” Sam repeats, his eyebrows drawing low. Wordlessly, Gabriel gestures to Lucifer, who can’t leave Sam’s line of sight.

Okay, Sam concedes, Mostly.

* * *

It’s strange, the way he and Lucifer have become connected.

The first time Lucifer tries zapping away to help Gabriel – Loki, Anansi, Coyote, Set – scout ahead, he immediately flashes back into existence at Sam’s side, shaking and trembling and pulsing with light.

“Oh,” Sam says.

“Oh,” Lucifer echoes.

“Looks like you two have some bonding to do,” Anansi smirks, resting his chin on his palm and leaning back on nothing, “I’ll leave you lovebirds to it.”

Even after Anansi is gone though, neither Sam nor Lucifer say anything.

* * *

“It’s easier than I thought it’d be,” Lucifer says one night out of the blue and Sam looks up, surprised. Although Lucifer hasn’t tried to leave his side since the first time, they rarely speak solely to each other. Even now, Lucifer is looking up at the sky-that-isn’t and not at him.

(Gabriel – Set, Loki, Anansi, Coyote – had explained to him; Everything around them – the sky and the ground, the grass, the stars – both existed and didn’t. It was both what it appeared to be and nothing at all. Absurdly, Sam thinks back to a course on Asian Philosophy he took at Stanford. Neo-Confucian thought, maybe?)

Sam has been able to read every tell of Lucifer’s body language, every little tic and nuance, but they’d fallen into a pattern of talking to Gabriel – Anansi, Coyote, Set, Loki – or not talking at all.

Sam licks his lips and tastes dust and ashes, “What’s easier?”

Lucifer’s shoulders lose their tension – he hadn’t been sure if Sam was going to answer, which strikes Sam as odd, if only because Lucifer had been worried about it.

“Being,” is all the answer Sam gets, and not a single second of eye-contact. Not that Sam can blame him; the moon-that-isn’t is bright and full, and off in the distance, Sam can hear Coyote professing his love up to her.

“Being what?” Sam asks, taking Lucifer’s lead and looking up at the sky.

For a moment, Lucifer doesn’t answer and Sam assumes the conversation is over. Coyote is still baying at the moon, high yips and long yowls.

“… Forgiven,” Lucifer whispers. Sam glances out the corner of his eye; Lucifer is staring pensively at his hands, eyebrows drawn low.

 _What do you have to be forgiven for, when you refuse to admit you were wrong? Who would forgive you?_ Sam nearly asks, but just then, Coyote comes loping back towards the fire, slipping into Gabriel’s skin between one step and the next. He smiles at them both, with only a hint of Anansi in his eyes. When he’s nearly to them, he calls out to Lucifer with a laugh and nothing but love in his voice, and Sam thinks he might understand.

* * *

When they finally reach the exit, for lack of better term, of Limbo, Sam nearly walks right past it.

“Hold up, satchmo,” Anansi calls, with a cackle in his voice like a hyena, “You’re gonna miss our turn.”

“There nothing here?” Sam doesn’t mean to make it a question, but ever since Gabriel crawled out of himself, ever since Sam found himself outside of Hell, Sam’s not really sure what’s going on anymore.

Gabriel stops at a boulder and smiles indulgently.

“Really?” Sam can feel his mouth twisting into a grimace, “A rock?”

Coyote barks out a laugh, “Of course not! Give us gods some credit, jeez.”

He points to the small lizard sunning itself on the boulder.

“Seriously,” Sam grouses, prompting Set to cackle wildly.

* * *

Sam won't be able to recall much of _leaving_ Limbo, after. He'll remember the lizard - small, bright blue with large guiless white eyes - and the boulder, the sun-that-wasn't beating down on the back of his neck, the hyena cackle of trickster gods close by, the low thrum of Lucifer's presence always within his peripheral.

But suddenly it was like putting on someone else's glasses, a prescription too strong, everything falling into blurred colours as his brain tried to make sense of something far beyond him and then the lizard was not a lizard but _light_ and _power_ barely held by the limitations of the third dimension and his body was _**screaming**_ but all his mind could process was _awe_ and --

**Author's Note:**

> i like trickster gods and was still upset about 5x16


End file.
